The Girls from See Saw Lane Read online

  Mary’s mum stayed at home to look after the house and do all the cooking and her dad worked on the bins. I think they spoiled her a bit because she was the only girl, which suited Mary fine.

  Her brothers were all older than her. There was Winston, Warren, Wesley, Wayne, and the twins William and Wallace. I got used to the hustle and bustle at Mary’s house and was soon just one of the family.

  One afternoon, when I was sitting on her bed and Mary was underneath it looking for the snakes and ladders, I said, ‘Why do all your brothers’ names begin with W?’

  ‘Because my dad’s a big West Ham supporter,’ she said.

  ‘Why doesn’t he support Brighton and Hove Albion?’

  ‘Because he was brought up in London and all his family are West Ham supporters. I’m sure that game’s under here.’

  ‘How come your name doesn’t begin with a W then?’ I asked.

  ‘Got it,’ she said, crawling out from under the bed. ‘What did you say?’

  ‘I said why doesn’t your name begin with a W?’

  ‘Because Dad had always promised Mum that if they ever had a girl then Mum should name her, which was fair enough, as she had to have six boys before she finally got me.’ She took the board out of the box and opened it out on the bed. She passed me the red counter and took the yellow one, her favourite colour.

  ‘Mary’s a pretty name though,’ I said, ‘better than Dorothy, anyway.’

  ‘I’m named after the virgin.’

  ‘What virgin?’

  ‘The Virgin Mary.’ She shook the dice and then threw a six. ‘I start,’ she shouted.

  ‘Why?’ I said.

  ‘Because I threw six.’

  ‘No, I mean why did she call you after the Virgin Mary? You’re not Catholics, are you?’

  ‘No, it’s just that every time Mum got pregnant, she prayed to a saint to have a girl. She’d done all the Church of England ones, so she thought she’d go straight to the top and have a word with the Virgin, because as she said, the Virgin Mary was a mother herself who had never managed to have a girl, so she might be more understanding than saints like Saint Andrew and Saint George, and it paid off, so she called me Mary as a sort of thank you.’

  I smiled at her. ‘I think that’s a really nice story.’

  I threw five and landed on a ladder and nearly got to the top of the board.

  * * *

  When me and Mary weren’t at her house or mine, we would be on Brighton beach. That first summer that we met seemed to go on forever, the sky was always blue and the sun shone for the whole six weeks. We spent every day down on the pebbly beach, skimming stones on the water and paddling in the icy sea. Mary always had a sketch pad with her. She loved to draw the sea, especially when the sky was full of dark clouds and the sea was wild and choppy and racing over the pebbles, thundering into the sea wall and splashing white foam and spray onto the prom. We went to the arcade on the Palace Pier and searched under the slot machines for pennies, then fed them into the sweet machines and filled our pockets with gobstoppers which lasted for hours. When the tide was out, we dug for worms and took them back to the estate to give to Mr Parish, who collected them for his fishing. We bought fish and chips with the money he gave us and sat on the wooden groyne eating them out of the paper with our fingers, washing the grease off in the rock pools. We would go home at the end of the day, two eight-year-olds, hot and tired, Mary as brown as a berry and me covered in freckles.

  One day, Mary climbed up onto the groyne and started walking along it.

  ‘Don’t,’ I shouted, ‘you might fall off.’

  She looked down at me grinning, ‘I might,’ she said.

  ‘Why are you doing it then?’

  ‘Because I might not, I don’t always.’ She held her hand out towards me. ‘Come on, give it a try.’

  ‘It’s all slippery,’ I said, ‘I’ll fall.’

  ‘Okay you might fall,’ she said, ‘but think how great you’ll feel if you don’t.’

  ‘I know I’ll fall.’

  ‘No, you don’t, that’s the exciting bit. What’s the point in doing something if you always know how it’s going to turn out?’

  I stood looking up at her, her hair was blowing across her face and she was grinning. She looked so brave and strong that it made me want to be brave too. It made me want to be just like my friend Mary Pickles.

  I was still feeling a bit unsure, but I sat down on the pebbles and took off my sandals. I lined them up neatly, side by side. Mary held out her hand towards me and helped me up onto the groyne. The wood was thick and old. It had been there for centuries, with the tide coming in and out over it. It felt very solid beneath my feet. Very slowly, I stood up, wobbled a bit and then managed to balance. I reached out towards Mary, and she took hold of my hand. She gave me a little smile and squeezed my fingers.

  ‘Come on then,’ she said. Slowly, we started to walk along the wooden structure. I was watching my bare feet, treading very carefully. Once or twice I thought I was going to fall, but I didn’t. We balanced all the way down to the water’s edge, then jumped down onto the pebbles.

  ‘You did it,’ she said, swinging me round. ‘She did it!’ Mary shouted into the wind.

  ‘I did, didn’t I?’ I said, grinning.

  ‘Wanna do it again?’ she said.

  ‘Not on your Nellie,’ I replied, walking up the beach laughing.

  Mary caught up with me and pulled me down onto the stones, where we lay side by side, staring up at the endless blue sky and listening to the water rattling over the pebbles, then the soft whoosh as the tide dragged them back into the sea.

  Mary and I were inseparable. We were like two people living the same life. Whenever I was worried or sad, I would think of something that we had done together and it would always make me smile.

  I remembered one particular Saturday morning, the morning Dad burnt down the garden shed. Me and Mary Pickles were about nine at the time.

  My sister Rita, who was a pain-in-the-neck teenager, had spent the morning crying because she’d read in lush magazine that you had to be 5’10’ to be a model and she’d be lucky if she reached 5’4’!

  She’d locked herself in the bedroom and no one could get her to come out, which wouldn’t have bothered me in the least if it wasn’t for the fact that half the bedroom’s mine. I was still in my pyjamas and Mary and me were going to Saturday morning pictures that started at eleven o’clock. Last week’s episode of Flash Gordon ended where Ming the Merciless, the ruler of the planet Mongo, was lowering Flash Gordon down into a vat of boiling oil and we’d been waiting all week to see if he was going to be saved by the forces of good. As it happened, he was saved every week, but as Mary said, this could be the one week when he wasn’t, so we had to get there on time. Plus the dreaded Mr Barclay in the ticket office wouldn’t let you in if you were late. He said it interfered with the viewing of the kids that had turned up on time. Not that he cared, if you ask me, he hated kids. Anyway, there I was in my pyjamas on the wrong side of the door when I needed to get dressed. Mum was kneeling on the landing trying to persuade Rita to come out.

  ‘You may not be 5’10’,’ Mum coaxed through the keyhole, ‘but you’re perfectly formed!’

  This got no response, so Mum tried again. ‘You nearly won the “most beautiful baby in Brighton” contest in 1948,’ she said. ‘That Baxter baby had sticky-out ears – he only won because it was rumoured that the judge might have been the Baxter baby’s father, on account of the fact that his ears stuck out as well and he used to give Mrs Baxter marrows off his allotment.’

  Still no response. Then Dad came upstairs.

  ‘What’s going on?’ he asked. Mum told him and he shouted through the keyhole that modelling was a daft job, and why couldn’t she do something useful, like nursing? That certainly got a response from Rita, and she started throwing things around the room. I decided to keep well out of it.

  Dad said he was going out to his shed and he went downstai
rs, mumbling about hysterical women.

  It had gone all quiet inside the bedroom, so Mum laid flat on the floor and peered under the door. ‘I can’t see her,’ she said to me. ‘Do you think she’s all right?’

  ‘She sounded all right just now,’ I said.

  All the noise had woken Clark up and he came out of his bedroom, stepped over Mum, and went downstairs.

  ‘Clark, go and tell your Aunty Brenda to come over,’ said Mum. ‘She’ll know what to do. Dottie, you stay here and listen.’

  There was nothing to listen to, so I went into Clark’s room. His Dennis the Menace clock said it was 9.15. Mary was going to kill me if I was late.

  Mum came back upstairs: ‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘Your Aunty Brenda will be here soon.’

  ‘I hope so,’ I said. ‘Mary will be round soon, and I need to get dressed.’

  ‘Where are you going?’ said Mum.

  ‘Saturday morning pictures.’

  ‘That’s nice.’

  Clark returned all red-faced and out of breath and suggested we kicked the door down. Actually, I thought that was a pretty good idea, but Mum said if Clark went anywhere near the door, he wouldn’t be able to sit down for a month.

  Just then Aunty Brenda came running up the stairs.

  ‘Thank goodness you’re here, Brenda!’ said Mum. ‘Perhaps you can talk some sense into her.’

  ‘I’ll do my best,’ said Aunty Brenda, and she put her ear to the door.

  ‘Dottie, get your Aunty Brenda a cup of tea.’

  I went downstairs, put the kettle on and sat down at the kitchen table. Clark was shovelling cornflakes into his mouth as if he hadn’t eaten for a year.

  I made the tea and went back upstairs. Aunty Brenda was halfway through the tale of the Baxter baby’s sticky-out ears and the judge’s marrows when Rita started screaming that her career was in ruins and why couldn’t Mum have married someone taller. Mum said that Dad was taller when she’d married him, but he’d shrunk.

  Rita said she was going to stay in there forever, and fade away, and that we’d all be sorry. Well, I reckoned I was the only one that would be sorry, because dead bodies smell after a bit, and I had to sleep in there.

  Mum and Aunty Brenda were just about to resort to kicking down the door themselves when Dad set fire to the garden shed.

  At the start of every New Year, my dad gives up smoking. At that point, he was two days into his hundredth attempt, and he’d gone down the shed for what my mum calls ‘a sneaky one’, but he’d fallen asleep, and the cigarette had dropped onto a pile of newspapers that I’d been saving in the hope that one day Mum would let me have a hamster like Mary’s.

  Anyway, Dad came rushing into the house screaming ‘Maureen! Call the fire brigade! The shed’s on fire!’

  Aunty Brenda started screaming ‘Women and children first’, which was most of us, and Clark started turning his bedroom upside down looking for his camera. He takes action pictures whenever he can.

  Mum ran next door to phone for the fire brigade, as next door was the only house in the street that had a phone, and Aunty Brenda shouted to Rita that the shed was on fire. Rita said: ‘Nice try.’ So Aunty Brenda hurled herself against the door, just as Rita decided to come out. They both went flying back into the room, and Rita nearly knocked herself out on the corner of the dressing table. Clark took a picture.

  ‘Quick, Dottie! Get your mum!’ screamed Aunty Brenda.

  I ran downstairs. Mum and Dad were running between the kitchen sink and the shed with bowls of water.

  ‘Aunty Brenda’s nearly knocked Rita out,’ I said, running beside them.

  ‘She’s done what?’ said Mum.

  ‘She pushed open the door just as Rita was coming out and Rita hit her head on the chest of drawers.’

  My dad looked ever so odd, his face was all black from the smoke, which made his eyes look really white. He looked a bit like a panda.

  Mum dropped the bowl she was carrying and ran back indoors.

  The shed looked great, just like bonfire night, only better. Clark was getting some terrific pictures. He had climbed the apple tree to get an aerial view.

  I went back upstairs. Rita was sitting propped up against the dressing table, looking a bit white, and Mum was dabbing her face with a wet cloth.

  ‘For goodness sake, Dottie,’ said Mum, looking up. ‘Isn’t it time you were out of those pyjamas?’ The question was so unfair I couldn’t think of an answer.

  ‘Maureen!’ shouted Dad from downstairs. ‘Are you sure you phoned the fire brigade? The apple tree’s alight now!’

  ‘What a shame,’ said Aunty Brenda. ‘You’ve had some lovely apples off that tree.’

  ‘Clark’s in the apple tree,’ I said, rummaging in the drawer for a clean pair of knickers.

  ‘They were Worcester’s,’ said Mum. ‘Clark’s WHERE?’ she screamed.

  ‘In the apple tree,’ I said. ‘Taking pictures.’

  ‘MY BABY!’ shrieked Mum, dropping Rita’s head on the floor.

  She ran down the stairs and nearly bumped into Clark who was running up them.

  ‘You’re supposed to be in the apple tree!’ yelled Mum, shaking him.

  ‘But it’s on fire!’ said Clark, looking at Mum as if she’d gone mad.

  Mum flopped down on the stairs and burst out crying. Aunty Brenda put her arm around her. ‘What we need is a nice cup of tea,’ she said, taking Mum into the kitchen. ‘Dottie, be nice to your sister.’

  I didn’t feel a bit like being nice to my sister. The last thing in the world I felt like was being was nice to my sister. All I wanted to do was get dressed. Was that such a lot to ask?

  I went into the bedroom. Everywhere was a mess. Rita was sitting on the bed looking pretty miserable. I thought I’d better try and be nice.

  ‘Perhaps you could go to a country where they don’t mind short models,’ I said.

  ‘What country?’

  ‘I don’t know, Japan or somewhere like that.’

  ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about, you stupid child!’

  So much for being ‘nice to your sister’. I wish I hadn’t bothered.

  ‘Have you got my new scarf?’ I asked.

  ‘What would I want with your grotty scarf?’ she said, gazing at herself in the mirror. She swept her hair up at the back and turned sideways: ‘Do you think I look like Audrey Hepburn?’

  ‘No, you look like Rita Perks.’

  ‘But with my hair pushed up at the back like this, don’t you think I look a bit like Audrey Hepburn?’

  ‘No, I don’t,’ I said, groping under the bed for my lost scarf.

  ‘You don’t know anything,’ she said. ‘I don’t know why I bothered asking you.’ And she flounced off to the bathroom.

  There was just no pleasing Rita that morning. I found my scarf under the bed and also a sherbet fountain that I’d thought Clark had pinched. Just then Mary came into the bedroom.

  ‘The fire brigade’s here,’ she said. ‘It only took them two squirts to put the shed out. Are you ready?’

  ‘Just about.’

  The shed looked a mess, so did the apple tree, but Mum looked a lot happier. She and Aunty Brenda were handing out cups of tea to the firemen. Dad looked a bit fed up, but then I suppose he would; if he hadn’t been having a ‘sneaky’ one, he wouldn’t have burnt the shed down.

  ‘Perhaps now he really will give up smoking,’ said Mary.

  ‘I hope so,’ I said, but I had my doubts.

  We said goodbye to Mum and Aunty Brenda, leaving Clark interviewing the firemen and Rita moping on her bed.

  Mary and I got a shilling a week pocket money, sixpence for the pictures and sixpence for sweets. We always went to the same sweet shop before going into the pictures. The woman who owned the shop was a bit strange; she always had her coat on, even in the summer when it was really hot, and she sniffed a lot. Me and Mary loved it in there. It was always packed with kids who took ages to choose their sweets. The w
oman behind the counter used to huff and puff and suck her cheeks in like she’d just bitten into a lemon. ‘There’s other people waiting, you know,’ she’d grumble. ‘You’re not the only one in the shop.’ Then she’d bully and nudge them towards making a decision like a collie dog with a load of sheep. But she was wasting her breath, because when you only had a few pennies to spend on sweets, you weren’t going to be hurried. On the shelves behind her were rows and rows of jars full of pear drops, rhubarb and custards, sherbet lemons, bull’s eyes, Pontefract cakes and humbugs, and on the counter were boxes of penny sweets. Black Jacks, Davy Crockett bars, flying saucers, liquorice laces and penny chews. Once we had chosen what we wanted, we went into the Regent Cinema and screamed and yelled at Ming the Merciless. We sat there glued to the screen, sticking our fingers into bags of lemonade powder so that when we came out it looked as if we were on forty fags a day.

  When I got home, Mum was sitting at the kitchen table drinking a cup of tea.

  ‘Him and his ciggies,’ she said, shaking her head.

  ‘Where’s Rita?’

  ‘She’s having a little lie down in the front room,’ she said quietly.

  ‘Is she okay now?’

  ‘She’s fine,’ said Mum. ‘She’s decided to be an actress instead.’

  ‘Shouldn’t be too difficult,’ I said, smiling.

  Mary’s Diary

  Dear Diary,

  I have fallen in love with a boy called Elton Briggs

  He is the most handsome boy in the school.

  When I grow up I am going to marry him.

  I have just got to make him fall in love with me.

  I am going to ask my brother Wesley for some advice because mum says he’s got a way with the girls.

  Also me and Dottie saw him snogging Susan Alcorn in the park.